Shojin

Shojin is a Japanese vegan restaurant located in Downtown LA. According to their website, they "don’t use refined sugar; instead use Brown rice syrup, Maple syrup and Maple sugar. No chemical seasonings and food additives are used in our meals."

That is always a huge plus in my book. I try to avoid using refined sugar but for certain things I have yet to figure out how to substitute for it.

I was also impressed to read that they "spend a great deal of time and effort on all hand made cooking. All of our original items such as Seitan, sauce, ketchup and dressing are hand-made, so we can accomplish our meals to be 100% natural."

Wow. Even their ketchup is hand-made? In my opinion that deserves some major props.

The restaurant opened in March 2008, so it is pretty new. I emailed the restaurant to get more background and the representative sent me the following information:

"We originally started as Japanese vegan restaurant to serve traditional Japanese vegetarian meals, "Shojin cuisine". However, some customer did not like (or not get used to) it, so slowly we offer some of western style menu like hanberg stake (made by seitan) or pasta menu."

The next time I am downtown I look forward to trying them out! Pictures from Shojin's representative.


click here for Shojin's website